Colleagues,

This blog covers February and March. As you will see it has been rather hectic and I was travelling during the first week in April and then had a few days relaxing on the Kenyan Coast so I’m rather late in posting.

Strengthening links with London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

On 7 February John McDermott, the director of the CGIAR Research Program (CRP) on Agriculture Nutrition and Health (A4NH) and I visited the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). The A4NH Flagship in Improving Human Health is co-led by ILRI (Bernard Bett) and Jo Lines at LSHTM. The purpose of the meeting was to help strengthen the links between LSHTM and ILRI. We identified opportunities to strengthen links on research to prepare for disease outbreaks and on research on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). We had very good discussions with several LSHTM staff, including  Sian Clarke who works on AMR. I invited her to visit ILRI and I am pleased that she has accepted and will visit Nairobi in early April.

A4NH Food Systems meeting 

The Food Systems for Healthy Diets Flagship of the A4NH CRP is led by Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Although ILRI is a partner in A4NH, we are not part of that Flagship. On 18-19 February the flagship held a consultative workshop in Addis with a range of centres and CRPs to explore how the Flagship could provide support to research on food systems across CGIAR. A similar workshop was held in Dhaka, Bangladesh in March. Following a mapping of research related to food systems across CGIAR we identified a number of actions to be taken forward. I’m sure other ideas emerged at the Dhaka meeting, but I look forward to ILRI working more on aspects of livestock in food systems.

Launch of the CGIAR Antimicrobial Resistance Hub

Antimicrobial resistance is a huge problem. We don’t know the extent to which use of antimicrobials in livestock contribute to the problem. While many countries in the developed world have drastically reduced or eliminated the use of antimicrobials in

Participants at the launch of the CGIAR AMR Hub in Nairobi (photo: ILRI/Paul Karaimu).

their livestock industries, they are still widely misused in low- and middle-income countries, although we don’t really know the extent of their use because data is very scarce. A new CGIAR AMR Hub as been created and was launched with partners at ILRI in Nairobi on 21-22 February. It is a multi-CRP, multi-centre initiative. Three CRPs, A4NH, Livestock and Fish are involved and it brings expertise from ILRI, WorldFish, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) to bear on the problem. The launch with about 80 people from research, governments and international agencies was an opportunity to spotlight the problem, hear from national partners and discuss how the Hub can support national governments tackle the problem.

Visit to India

I spent 25-28 February in India. On 25^th along with Habibar Rahman, Ram Deka, Braja Swain and Roma Oli from India and John Goopy, Karl Rich and Olivier Hanotte we met with senior staff from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to discuss four new projects under the new ILRI–ICAR four-year work plan. I then signed the work plan along with Trilochan Mohapatra, the director general of ICAR. I then spent a couple of days in Guwahati, the state capital of Assam, where I was invited to give a keynote presentation at the 50^th Anniversary Conference of the Assam Agricultural University. It was good to be back in Assam after nearly five years and see the great work being done by Ram Deka in our Guwahati office. Ram and I worked closely for many years when I was based in India and ILRI has a great reputation in the North East of India. Ram arranged meetings with some key government officials and we discussed how ILRI could contribute more to the development of the livestock sector in the region.

Institute Research Management Committee (IRMC) meeting

The IRMC meeting was held on 6-7 March in Nairobi. There were updates on some CGIAR-wide issues, the ILRI finances in 2018 and 2019 (we are projecting the second highest budget ever in 2019), the CGIAR Gender Platform and some of the changes in grading structure. In addition we discussed how to take forward the recommendations of the reviews of research methods, data management and research computing. We also discussed Communications and Knowledge Management (CKM), including hearing Michael Victor’s first thoughts since he became Head of CKM. Finally we had discussions on the role of the Business Development Unit.

Fourth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-4)

President Macron addresses the One Planet Summit at the United Nations Environment Assembly

The fourth session of United Nations Environment Assembly  (UNEA-4) was held in Nairobi in March with the theme ‘Innovative Solutions for Environmental Challenges and Sustainable Consumption and Production.’ I participated in some of the sessions and side events, as did Polly Ericksen, Shirley Tarawali, Fiona Flintan and Bolek Stawicki. Highlights included a breakfast meeting that ILRI co-organized to promote the idea of an International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralism, the Science-Business-Policy Forum and the One Planet Summit, attended by the Presidents of Kenya and France, along with several other Heads of State. We were delighted that a resolution on rangelands and pastoralism, proposed by the Government of Kenya and supported by the Africa Group and which specifically mentions the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralism was universally endorsed and adopted.

Visit to Bangladesh 

I was back in South Asia on 18-21 March, this time in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I spent two days with Habibar Rahman visiting some of our partners and potential partners in Bangladesh, including the World Bank, Department of Livestock Services, Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute (BLRI), the Embassy of the Netherlands and the SAARC Agricultural Centre. There is a lot of potential for us to be more active in Bangladesh — BLRI in particular would like to work more closely with us on animal health, food safety and AMR. Then along with Bernard Bett and Johanna Lindahl I attended a planning and management committee meeting of the A4NH CRP.

New research ideas

Many staff have been engaged during the past two months in preparing a draft proposal on exciting new ideas for livestock research to be presented to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other donors. We have been challenged by our donors to develop a compelling case for increased investment in ILRI to support the growth of the livestock sector in low- and middle-income countries. This included a series of stakeholder consultations in Addis, which I did not attend as they clashed with my visit to Bangladesh. I am please to say that the whole process, although challenging has been progressing well and I want to thank everyone who has been contributing to this big effort, especially Boni Moyo who has been leading and coordinating the whole process. We still have a lot of work to do but the whole effort is moving in the right direction.

Till next month.

Iain